Ah, life. So many distractions, so many reasons not to finish writing my novel. From the lows of that quiz which told me it would take years for me to finish a novel to the highs of November when I actually completed a (really very terrible) draft of it for NaNoWriMo, there are some days I can practically see my novel on a bookshop shelf, and others when even finishing one more chapter seems like a Mount Everest level challenge.
But I just have to finish it. Why? That’s a good …

What’s happening to my country? Are we actually supporting literature? This week in my state, a new award was announced: the Western Australian Premier’s Australia-Asia Literary Award. It’s for books published by Australian or Asian writers, or largely set in these regions, published in the preceding year, and the especially nice part is it’s worth A$110,000. This makes it one of the richest prizes of its kind – even the Man Booker Prize is only worth a little bit more.
It was only a few months back I mentioned the new …